Conclusion

Violent films have been, and continue to be, a staple of Western culture. They are omnipresent - in the theatres, on television, on DVD and Blu-ray, and streaming online. The presentation of graphic violence has become ‘an intrinsic part of contemporary cinema',^{^[1032]} and it attracts large audiences all over the world.

Viewers in the USA, Europe and around the world spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year at the cinema watching people being shot, beaten, burned and dismembered. Yet we continue to have a strange relationship with cinematic violence - at once drawn to and repelled by it. As film critic Stephen Hunter noted: ‘We abhor the authentic stuff, and turn in national revulsion from it. Then we go pay seven bucks to watch it in Technicolor in the mall.'^{^[1033]} Questions persist about the place of extreme violence in our entertainment, the purposes it might serve, and how it might affect and be affected by societal and cultural norms and limits. The continual presence of such violence throughout the history of Western cinema - from single-shot primitive documentaries of executions and boxing matches, to today's epic spectacles costing hundreds of millions of dollars - speaks to its fundamental appeal and endless source of fascination. In his book The Fascination of Film Violence, Henry Bacon asks, ‘Is it even possible to depict horrific violence in a way that would not be potentially fascinating?'^{^[1034]} The past 120 years of cinema seem to suggest that the answer is no.

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Source: Edwards Louise, Penn Nigel, Winter Jay (eds.). The Cambridge World History of Violence. Volume 4: 1800 to the Present. Cambridge University Press,2020. — 676 p.. 2020

Conclusion

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